Twenty-five mother-toddler dyads with depressed mothers were compared with 25 dyads with well mothers on measures of attention during 20 minutes of spontaneous play in a home-like setting. The children of the depressed women focused their attention on significantly more objects for significantly shorter durations of time. Depressed women initiated and terminated significantly more instances of attention to objects than did the well mothers. The correlations between the maternal behaviors and the children's attention behaviors were statistically significant. The results support the hypothesis that the poorer attention of children of depressed women as reported in the literature, is at least in part mediated by inculcation.